Blacksmith Apprenticeship

With God's blessings I am to begin blacksmithing this week.  I can't wait to make belt buckles instead of buying imported ones.  I can't wait to learn.  You might be thinking what are you nuts?  Why in the world would you want to pursue an antiquated technology.  We have CNC machines and cheap foundries in China?  This is the mindset that drives me nuts.  Cheap does not = good.  Everything is not a commodity.  Artists and makers do not create commodity they build community.  They strive to do their best in everything.

The work of the Blacksmith is the purest and most powerful of the Arts.  It combines all four Earth elements in perfect harmony to create perfection.  The earth is the iron ore which is the most abundant mineral here.  The iron is burnt at high temperatures in a wood fire to create Iron + Carbon or steel.  The Fire burns bright to heat a forge and bring life to the steel.  Wind is needed to maximize the fire without which it would not be possible.  Water is needed to quench and temper the steel so that it gains strength by tightening the density of the steel. 

Updates soon the anvil is coming in from Texas and other US made tools are on their way.

Forge and anvil arrived today:)  10/22/2015  Got to play for a half hour before sunset.  Last Winter my buddy Kurt and I built a coal forge with some antique bricks I found along the river.  It is so weird what you can find in the woods.  Often times there are abandoned construction sites and homeless camps.  You can find many useful things.  The woods are definitely where serendipity reigns supreme.  Anyway we were too dumb to have a blower and were blowing at the fire with metal pipes and using a brick as an anvil.  The head of Kurt's old two pound hammer kept falling off.  It was as primitive as you could possibly imagine on a cold December day in Ohio.

A modern gas forge and professional farriers anvil came today :)  Tomorrow is going to be awesome!

10/23/2015  It was a great day.  Leather work and Fall Cleaning took up much of the day.  During cleaning I had a dilemma of no where to hang my coats and bags.  Enter a piece of 3/8" steel rod and a beginner blacksmith :)  I turned the forge up to 10 psi after working 3/16" steel last night at 7 psi.  It seemed to work well the forge was up to temp in just a couple minutes.  It took about 30 minutes to pound out the coat hook and too long getting the correct drill bit.  Note to beginners the proper drill bit for hardened steel cuts through like butter.  Always use the proper tool!  A mason, wood or tungsten bit will not work.  You will think they are working but save yourself the time and frustration.

Above is the scrolled tip which only took a couple minutes to figure out.  If I make a mandrel for the pritchel hole on the anvil the scroll should look much neater but I think it looks nice for a first try.

Definitely room for improvement here.  This was my very first time cutting steel with a hammer; it wasn't pretty.  I should have turned up the forge or waited longer.  It was difficult to cut the steel on the step of the anvil; a hardy hole cutter is probably a good tool to make.  Practice; I can already tell this is going to take a lot of practice.  One time my mom asked me how long it takes to learn guitar.  I told her I didn't know; I have been playing 16 years and am still learning.

Coat hanger with brass wood screws.

Coat hanger in use.  Chalk one up for the good guys.  Baby steps.
Make new tools, make good work, be a good neighbor.  Have a nice weekend.

10/24/15  Fooled around for a couple hours today.  Cutting is easier when you do it properly and don't strike the face :)  It is pretty funny when a bright orange piece of metal falls on the ground because you have the wrong tongs.  At 2000F most things burn on contact.  When the dirt catches on fire you know that you are working with powerful forces.

A few hundred degrees more and it melts.  Pretty cool stuff.  This piece started off well but got smashed and I am still working on unsmashing things.

Coat hanger coming along.  With an actual scrolling jig I could do things much faster than freehand.

A jig would probably never make a coat hook that looked like a mother holding a newborn though.

You could hang from it if your wood was decent :)  It might not be pretty but it is damn honest.  I also worked on a belt buckle that didn't pan out well.  To work the way I like to work I am going to definitely need to buy some tool steel and make some jigs and tools. Which will be cool for sure to learn forge welding which is one of the single most badass things you can do.  Heat steel so hot that when you hammer it the molecules bond permanently.   Freehand, tool less is too hard and very time consuming without proper tools.

We finally got a good rain here tonight.  Perfect night to help an old friend move then relax a spell.  Hope your day went well.

10/28/15 Wow, that was a lot of rain hope to have a proper update tomorrow.

11/1/15 Clear skies today and it warmed up to boot!  The lesson of the day was Cool Your Tools!  Keep tools away from the fire until the heat is done.  For short pieces and short tongs cool your tools every few heats.  Nothing is worse than metal burning through leather on too your hands!

I wanted to forge weld a buckle today so I figured the only way to learn was too try!
Heated to bright orange and poured flux all over it because I figured I can't think of another way to do it.

This might be a little too cool still.

Ended up very nice in my opinion at least relatively speaking.  Relative to the buckles I made before that looked like a dragon would be wearing them.

Hands were burning, time too cool my tools!

Buckle pin.

Buckle pin loop, ended up needing some tweaking to work properly.

Lets try a scrolled leaf coat hook!  Peening and drawing out the end.  I was proud of myself as I had this in the fire when I was finishing up the buckle.  Working smart or something like that!

Scrolled leaf.

Hook still needs screw holes drilled out.

Simple and neat.  It was a fun day of practice on a beautiful afternoon. 

11/3/15 Gorgeous day, took the day off of leather work after catching up some over the weekend.  Went to the scrap yard to find practice materials.  You would be amazed at what is there.  It is about the shittiest place you could go next to a mosquito infested area.  There are antique tools from actual US Tool Steel for pennies on the $10.  Got some old wrenches, vise grips and a 5/8" drill bit with a 40 lb. 8 foot piece of 1 1/4" rebar for $30.

Today's lesson was materials and the importance of knowing what you are working with.  Working with the rebar was a lesson for sure.  Pounding away on it with a 12 lb sledge and a cement chisel was work.  Hard work.  The first goal was to cut off a 5 in. piece to make a hardy hole cutting tool.  Don't do it.  It is too soft use tool steel.  Kurt and I did it and it made a use able tool but it is too soft.  I mean if you want to clean up the edge with every use or if it is an emergency situation sure it would be fine. 

Then we made an upsetting block from the rebar.  I think it will be fine for the job.  So the upsetting block was also a belt buckle jig which wasn't what I had hoped.  Lesson learned no new belt buckles today.

The problem was that I was so set on making a belt buckle I didn't heed Kurt's advice.  It was an unused antique drill bit that would have been more useful as a drill bit.  You cannot forge weld it though I could be wrong I have only been doing this two weeks!  It forges just fine a little hard but at only 5'8" I imagine most things would forge easily compared to the 1 1/4" rebar.

It didn't weld so I thought it would make a nice coat hook and it did.  It was very nice until I tried to drill the screw holes in it!  You can't drill through a drill bit!  Which makes sense now!  So a future project is turning the coat hook into a punch since I ruined it as a drilling tool ;)  Funny stuff for sure and the reason people take classes on this.

It was perfect fall weather today and a great day to learn about taking iron from the earth and heating it with the fire from hell.  A good day to get sweaty and think.  I have already thought up a design for an awesome hardy hole cutter and figured out a better way to make a buckle.  The entire practice seems so simple yet requires so much practice to learn how to hold the piece and where to hit it.  If you hit it on the wrong side which seems like the correct side you deform the opposite angle.  Definitely a lot of trial and error but practice makes perfect.  Lots of practice.  The traditional apprenticeship was 7 years with 3-4 years of shit work so maybe three years of hands on learning.  Now a days with the internet you can learn as fast as you wish.  Hope everyone had a good day.  I know I did.  Winter is almost here and it has been dark for hours.  Time to cook some dinner and play the guitar.  Good night.

Winter Kayaking

A huge sheet of ice was a cool place to take a break on.  It is also really fun to crash into huge sheets of ice and play Titanic or ICE CRUSHER.

 Man oh man. First week of February and I was so relieved today when the river finally melted.  I hadn't been on the water in almost two months and it was hard to go that long.

First pic of the day so glad the river had thawed mid Winter.  It was up to 40F today; up from a steady 10-20F.

 The river was low and there was some current the first part of the trip as we always start going upstream to save the complications of a second vehicle.  I think going upstream is good exercise and is fairly safe.  It is much easier to be pulled downstream into danger than being pulled upstream into danger.  It was a good way to spend the afternoon.  Don't get me wrong, going into a 20 mph flooded river in the Summer with a bunch of tight turns is really fun.  But I don't really want to get wet when the water is still frozen in spots.  Today was just to get out and be with nature and celebrate that Spring is going to be coming soon.

I am still an amateur photographer.  Zoom + motion = bad idea.  One of my favorite spots in the Summer.

It is getting late, the sun is going down and it is getting chilly.  So nice to see some signs of Spring.  I was trying too hard to focus on the buds to identify the tree but I am guessing it was a common Red Bud.  Just a few more weeks until Potato and Pea planting time!

Cruising by some good friends.

Paddling all out in an attempt to mount or crush the giant hunk of ice.  It is a pretty fun game.

A couple of times Kurt and I both commandeered a 15' x 10' chunk of ice down the river.  Our boats were still floating on the ice as we captained the huge three inch thick sheet of ice down the river.  I learned a good lesson that trying to stand on one of those sheets of ice leads to wet boots!  Log rafts must be very hard to steer with a paddle alone.

Piloting an iceberg back home.

 It started to rain as we made our way back to the truck.  I am glad I was able to spend some time on the river today.  There were a lot of guys out fishing today and I saw a lot of people in shorts when I walked Kamala this morning.  HOORAY for warm Winter Days; Spring will be here soon.  Hope everyone is staying warm.

Home

Took a well deserved day off today after finally learning how this site works and the difference between pages and posts :) I am not a slow learner but when I started this business there were only a handful of people doing quality leather work and I was swamped.  I am grateful that there are so many talented craftsmen and women out there now and that people are choosing handmade over corporate trash.  I am really looking forward to 2015.  The Forge is built me and my buddy Kurt just need to find a serviceable anvil to work on after we broke the primitive one we used to forge two primitive belt buckles.  I am looking forward to making things out of metal it has been a dream of mine for several years now.

As far as leather work goes I hope to have an updated bike bag up soon that combines all of the knowledge I have learned over the last 5 years of making leather goods.  I also hope to soon be offering strops and promoting straight razor shaving as an alternative to disposable razors.  Straight razors are a true joy to use; it is a shame they have fallen out of popularity and only have a cult following here in the US.  I am looking forward to Spring and removing this giant mound of hair from my face!  It is to difficult to pedicab in the Winter with out "man made" insulation!

Looking forward to March to get some potato and pea plots planted.  Super stoked to try out the Native American Three Sisters gardening method.  Very excited for year two of The Banana Bike; can't wait for the warm weather and the healing rays of our Father the Sun.

Holly and I watched a movie today called The Last Mountain; and I urge you to check it out.  It is a documentary film (the best kind) raising awareness about the removal of mountain tops in the beautiful state of West Virginia in the Appalachian Mountain Range by coal companies.  The ravaging of pure natural resources and pollution of the planet for corporate profit to continue to operate things the barbaric way they have been.  It is a very enlightening film.  I don't often spend time watching movies and killed my television almost 20 years ago; but it would be worth your time to watch.  Did you know that Canada did away with all of their coal burning power plants in 2014 or that wind power could be a sustainable non polluting power source?  I for one am vowing to cut my already meager electric bill in as many ways as possible this year.  Feel free to share some of your energy saving tips.

My #1 priority to re read in 2015

Almost a decade ago I visited Walden Pond after reading Thoreau and found a warning sign stating it was unsafe to drink the water.  I drank it anyway. It was good.  It is sickening that corporate greed has polluted every single pure source of fresh water in this country.  The "conveniences" of "modern" day living are NOT more valuable than the clean air and water our native peoples worshiped.  Humans have survived happily for many thousands of years without polluting our natural resources.  It is absurd that our "modern" civilization is so wreck less.  We can only pray and toil so that one day our land may once again be pure and that the apocalyptic Mad Max fictional stories do not become a reality. 

What are you excited for in 2015?  What are some ways you feel can help your community?  I wish you luck in all of your endeavors. 

Best regards,
Bill